~ Thoughts on Freedom and The West

So Complex It’s Simple

Only the U.S. government could rake in mind-boggling, record tax revenues and still run a deficit.

Despite collecting record amounts of individual income taxes and payroll taxes, the Treasury still ran a deficit of $526,855,000,000 in the first six months of fiscal 2017.

Also, even with record revenues from individual income taxes and payroll taxes in the first six months of fiscal 2017, overall federal tax collections were slightly down.

In the first six months of fiscal 2016, the federal government collected $1,513,124,070,000 (in constant 2017 dollars) in total taxes. In the first six months of this fiscal year, total federal tax collections have dropped to $1,473,137,000,000—a decline of about $39,987,070,000 from total tax collections in the first six months of fiscal 2016.

So much money and it’s still not enough. Thus, the debt grows apace.

The solution is simple: stop spending so much. Then again, as this cartoon, today, illustrates, the simple doesn’t always go over so well addressing the needlessly complex: